Good Morning, Everyone. Nice, bright sunshine today. We actually got well into the 30s yesterday and some places actually got above 40. I would dearly love to see the snow melt and go away until next season. I got all my african violets repotted over the last couple of days. One that had been coming back from some kind of crown rot had produced three young plants and another also had a new plant coming out. So I now have four more violets than before. I also planted some of the Burpee's cat grass seeds for my three monsters. Yes, the Burpee's order came in and that has only added to my fervent desire for spring to come in so I can get at my outside planters.

I found this nasty story on NPR by way of the Facebook feed. It is one reason why I get turned off whenever some, usually, Republican idiot starts talking about getting government out of our lives. They have been pushing the notion that people should do more for themselves--get health savings accounts and individual insurance so they don't rely on government or employers, get individual retirement accounts of one form or another so they don't rely on government or employers, etc.--but they don't address what to do about situations where people have done exactly that and then get defrauded out of the savings. Worse, the people whose savings have been stolen become unsecured creditors of a bankrupt company which means that they go to the end of the line and get anything that is left--if anything is left.

Yeah, Kay, I sometimes feel that we are loosing our collective minds. Or, worse, that we are trapped in an insane asylum and can't find our way out.

I cheered when I saw this article in the New York Times. I have said frequently over the last year that bipartisanship works only when you have two sides willing to honestly negotiate and compromise. It does not work when one of the sides insists that 'compromise' be defined as 'you give up all of what you want and agree to all of what I want, or else.' I hope that either Obama goes through with the plan to write his own health care bill and attach it to a budget bill (which doesn't require 60 votes to end debate followed by another 60 votes to pass), or that the Republicans sit down and honestly negotiate a workable compromise. If there are any honest Republicans out there they haven't made the news recently.

You may be right, Lois. If so we have a Gresham's Law of news acting here. There is so much 'cheap' news that it is driving the 'dear' news out. We are getting so much drivel that the serious news is simply drowned.

We have a rather humorous and recurring exchange here. We will be watching the news and the news readers cite some figure on how much the 'average' American consumes or, in the case of waste, produces. Last night we were told that the 'average' American produces 4 lbs of waste daily. Mom and I looked at each other and asked who was producing our share because we certainly aren't--not even if you consider the amount we scoop out of our cats' box each day. On the other side, we don't get our share of the meat, or the chocolate, or the sugar, etc., either. Has anyone ever met an 'average' American?

Mark Morford posted a little piece that pretty well sums up the current political scene. As I read what he wrote about the polls indicating that 92% of Americans want a total turn over of our elected representative I thought back to another poll some years ago that indicated much the same thing. However, that poll showed that, although people were overwhelmingly disillusioned with elected officials generally, the were very supportive and approving of their own representatives. And that is why we probably won't get a major turnover except for those seats whose current occupants, like Bayh, who are retiring. Most of us can't understand why other citizens in other districts and states don't vote the snakes out of office while voting to reelect our own snakes.